I'm an avid fanfiction reader who used to be a guest reviewer going by the name of 'The Critic'. Made this account so that people who got pissed of at my reviews or thought I was to harsh (which to be fair I have a tendency to be sometimes) have something to take out their frustrations on. I am VERY picky when I read fanfictions (honestly I might be too picky) and tend to write incensed reviews, especially when it's a story I really like yet feel like the characters doesn't act according to their nature or something completly illogical happens. If I'm to harsh then I apologize, I don't mean to be, it's just the way things are.

I like realistic, logical and well-writen stories. I don't care if it's been written a thousand times before aslong as you manage to make it good. Originality is fun though. I dislike fanfics who sticks to canon when theres been so many changes in the story from canon, that it no longer makes any sense for it to stick to canon. Everything ripples out. Every choice a character make, every life saved and lost. EVERYTHING ripples out and ESPECIALLY when you change the fate of the main character even if it's just a minor change.

The more things change, the less likely and realistic is it that canon would happen like before. If you make to many changes, you as the author needs to have the courage and imagination to go off road. After all, why would I want to read an Naruto fanfic where, for example, Naruto has the sharingan if everything happens exactly like in canon? Is there even a point to it? Fanfiction is a way of writing a "what if" story, not a way of reading canon with a minor tweak.

Recently I've been really into reading fanfiction with "The Gamer" power involved. By now however I've read so many that I've had enough seeing some of the more illogical parts over and over. To try and kill these pet peeves of mine and hopefully erase them all from fanfiction, I proudly present to you all:

Top ten things you should keep in mind when writing a fanfiction featuring "The Gamer" power!

1: The Gamer power shouldn't be omniscient Most Gamer fanfics make the Gamer power out to be all-knowing and flawless. It tells you the name of everyone and their threat level without you knowing anything about them. Frankly that’s just makes for a boring story. A better solution is that if you think a person is weak, for example you can’t feel any power from them and draw the conclusion that they are weak then the gamer power should give them a low level. If you think that they are a god basically then they should have level ??? even if they really are completely powerless. It all should depend of what you think. If you think his name is Edric Appleby then the power will show that name instead of Thor even if the guy truly is the god of lightning from nordic mythology.

2: Don't use INT (intelligence) as a way to boost mana/aura/chakra. I see this in nearly every fanfic. INT is used both as someone’s intelligence and a number to show how much mana/aura/chakra they can access. This results in that every high level / strong opponent has an insanely high INT stat, let’s say 300, while a civilian doctor that doesn’t fight only have a INT stat of around 10-20. You seriously mean to tell me that a doctor or a mathematician is less intelligent then a twelve-year-old that happens to be excellent in killing things? Separate INT from the power you are using and create a separate stat for that energy. It doesn't matter what form this energy might be, whether it's MAG (Magic) and MAGR (magic regenteration), AUR (Aura) and AURR (Aura Regeneration) or CHK (Chakra) and CHKR (Chakra Regeneration). All that matters it that you seperate it from the INT stat. That way you can throw whatever number you want in there without making every civilian out there to be as stupid as you can get. That or remove INT all together, after all it’s hard to write a character to be smarter and wiser even though I see some fanfiction here that succeed doing so.

3: Be careful of easy stat points at the start. For example, wisdom shouldn't be given just by thinking of making one wise move, it should be given by actually doing a whole series of wise moves. For example, planning to using a plasma gun to fight ghosts are a wise move but it shouldn’t give you a wisdom point. Actually fighting them and continuing doing wise decisions through the fight, like for example aiming at the most dangerous target should give you a wisdom point. Think of it like every stat point got its own invisible experience bar. Every time you level the stat point it requires more exp to reach the next level which means that instead of the one good decision it took you to improve your wisdom from 1-2 it takes 4000 good decisions to level it from 88-89.

4: Don't give spells a set mana cost. Setting mana costs so rigid is a flaw I hate to see in many gamer fanfictions. In games a rigid mana cost works because the spells there are set to always do the same thing. For example, a frostbolt will always be a frostbolt of the same size, doing the same amount of damage. In real life you can make the frostbolt larger by pumping in more mana. My recommendation here is that you don’t give the MC set mana costs and instead just let the mana drain by usage. For example, if you are trying to create a new spell then you don’t know how much mana it will take. It could easily drain you if you don’t have enough mana then destabilize and explode.

5: Don't give percentual damage to things. I dislike giving percentual damage to things in gamer fics. Percentual damage should only work against people with the gamer body since % damage only works in games. If you throw a spear of frost at someone’s head they won’t go "Ohh that cost me 210 hp and was a critical hit". No they would be dead from the spear piercing their head. Skills like human biology shouldn't give the MC 4% extra damage against humans per level in human biology. The only thing level in biology should give is maybe intelligence points and the pure knowledge of knowing where to aim and what to hit and how to heal. I mean healing without knowing HOW or WHAT to heal is a bit over the top isn’t it?

6: Don't let the quests be omniscient. I dislike how most quests in gamer fanfics knows what will happen if you lose of fail. A realistic quest would be "Your mom wants you to do well in school. If you manage it she promised you cake." with the quest being automatically accepted. If you then want to decline the quest you'll have to do something to do exactly that, like telling her you can't or something along that line.

If you really have to add the possible rewards though then this would be the appropriate way of doing so without making the gamer power into a god capable of telling the future. "Your mom wants you to do well in school. If you manage it she promised you cake. Completion: 300xp cake, Failure: No cake, Decline: Loss of reputation with mom" And then if you want to decline you'll have to tell your mom no that you don't want to reach top 5 in the grade or that it's not possible because of whatever.

Depending on what you say you can nullify the loss of reputation with mom from declining, if you accept and succeed then you can improve your rewards by making the right choices and everything. The quest rewards / penalties are just telling you what your subconscious think you'll get from the current information. It could all change depending on what happens later on. You could try talking your mom into giving you money instead of the cake, or higher allowance or whatever. She might forget to buy the cake and you don’t get anything except exp for completing the quest. Anything could happen since it’s the real world and not a game. The only thing that is a game is you, the world still works as usual.

7: Dropping items. Yeah I get that in some games wolves drop swords, clothes that somehow fits everyone and skill books. I dislike when people use it in their fanfictions. A wolf should drop things yes but the drops should be things like materials for crafting and such. That would make the MC's life a bit harder since not everything in the story will be given to him. You want a OP dragon hide armor? YOU MAKE IT LIKE EVERYONE ELSE! You find a dragon, you kill it, skin it, learn how to sew it together properly and enchant it and stuff.

8: MONSTERS DO NOT DROP MONEY! I don’t get why EVERY gamer fic out there makes monsters drop money. Unless the currency is monster parts, or some kind of magical soul thing that you can drain from them it makes no sense! Money have serial numbers on them so that they can be tracked. That would either make the money drop fake or a duplicate which is still illegal. You kill a human and you can loot him for 27$? Yeah THAT I can accept if it was what he had in his pockets or on his body but otherwise no. One great fanfic that embodies this and making the monsters drop money in a realistic way is Forged Destiny by Coeur Al'Aran. If you haven’t read it I deeply recommend it.

9: Skill Creation. Giving the MC the ability to create whatever skill he wants in seconds, that is just giving unrealistic advantages to the MC beyond the Gamer powers. Let’s face it, Gamers Mind and Gamers Body is OP as hell as they are, they don’t need improvement. Gamers mind keeping you sane and immune to mind control? Extremely overpowered since it will keep you calm and logical even in situations where anyone else would have broken mentally.
Gamers body is the perfect body for all skills since for one, it cannot be wounded in any way and is perfectly malleable. Unlike normal humans that are maybe born with a slight affinity for an element, the gamers body got no affinity until you give it one. Gamers body also removes all the normal limits of the human body. Sure you can only grow so strong or so fast naturally but the stat points gained each level allows you to reach unrealistic levels. It also allows you to see exactly how strong and how far you are from becoming even stronger. As we can see from above the skills Gamers Mind and Body are extremely good already just as they are, which means that the skill creation is taking it one step to far.

You wishing for a certain power and it will just give it to you? No! You want a skill? Great! Then you should either learn how to do it yourself, finding a book that your semblance manage to see as a skill book or creating the skill by experimenting. For example, let’s say you want your MC to learn forget and mind control. The only way I can see the MC getting them normally with the gamer powers should be by him manipulating energy inside people’s brains and see what happens with a lot of people dying by the experiments. And even then, he needs A LOT of knowledge about the mind and brain to even know what to go for. Don’t just throw skills at your MC, make him work for them.

10. And this is the last one. Skills. Most gamer fanfics on this site gives the MC a new skill like driving for example at level 1 and suddenly he’s an exceptionally good driver. The rest of the levels just let him become faster with vehicles and such. In my opinion, learning driving from a skill book and getting it to level one is basically you learning how to drive in real life from a book. You know where everything is but you have no practical experience which would make your driving horrible. At level 10 perhaps you are an acceptable driver. Level 20 average, level 30 exceptional, lv 40 amazing and so on. Even if you know how something works from a book, without any practical experience you can’t be great at it. The same goes for fighting such as boxing, fencing, swordplay and so on.

Follow these points and your Gamer power will stop being a allmighty omnipotent god capable of knowing the future and instead being a tool recording what you know. Still insanely useful but doesn't overpower the character if you know what you're doing.